The Hunters
by Crimson Clockwork
Summary: English game hunter named Robert Muldoon meets English game hunter named John Riddell through mysterious circumstances. Both have big guns and both have experience kicking raptor butt. Quick, meaningless one-off. T for language, blood, and hunters doing what hunters do.


_I rewatched Dinosaurs on a Spaceship today, and thought of this._

* * *

The man stepped quietly and carefully through hot jungle, holding a combat shotgun high as he walked. The air around him was wet and sticky, and it was like trying to breathe soup. Branches and thorns poked his legs from every direction. But the man carried on regardless. There was a deadly target ahead.

Robert Muldoon crouched, peering through the trees. It was around here somewhere, it had to be. The tracks were fresh; it couldn't have gone far.

Stepping over a log, he saw it then: rustling in the bushes ahead. Something quite sizeable. And a sort of purring noise, unearthly and reptilian, but somehow contented. And the head of a _Velociraptor_ rose up from the ferns.

Muldoon paused. Thankfully it hadn't seen him. If it saw him, then he was a dead man.

He set his trusted hat down on the ground in front of him. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He couldn't help it, the air was hot and he was tense. Quietly, he prepared. Loaded. Aimed.

Muldoon's finger was about to pull the trigger when he heard the bushes next to him move aside, and then, a simple hiss.

He turned, and saw the head of another _Velociraptor_ locked in a toothy grin, inches from his own face. Muldoon's expression changed from pure confidence to surprise in a heartbeat. And quietly, he whispered:

"Clever girl."

And just like that he was there.

Instead of jungle, he saw yellow grass. Instead of logs, he saw termite mounds in the distance. Instead of death above him, he saw blue sky.

And instead of eerie hissing, he heard a voice say, "Who the _hell_ are you?"

Muldoon blinked. He was still situated in the same position he had been in, back on Isla Nublar. But Isla Nublar had changed. It couldn't be the same island. In fact, it couldn't be an island at all. That was because in fact, he was suddenly in the African savanna.

He stood up, and turned towards the direction of the voice. Standing by an old-looking tent – a _really_ old-looking tent – was a man dressed much like him, who sounded much like him, but was most definitely _not_ him.

"Well…" Muldoon replied. Might as well make the best of it. "Well, who the hell are _you_?"

The man by the tent sighed. "John Riddell. I don't suppose you've been trying to steal my thunder and my trophies, hmm?" he said, looking suspiciously at Muldoon's shotgun.

Muldoon's head was spinning. He had read up on many historical game hunters, and John Riddell was name he recognized. A name from the early 1900s.

"I'm Muldoon, I haven't been doing anything, I just ended up here from the midst of a tropical forest!" he said. "This will sound like a stupid question, but – what year is it again?"

Riddell looked flabbergasted. "This is the year 1902, what rock have you been living under?" he laughed. And then he frowned, almost in realization. "…oh God, not this again."

Muldoon looked equally flabbergasted. "Hold on, explain that again," he said, "because last I checked, I live more than 90 years past that date! Either that, or one of us must have to be insane or something!"

"How about both of us?" Riddell asked.

Silence fell across the savanna as both men pondered that question, but it was broken by a hissing sound that was very familiar to the both of them.

Instinctively, the two hunters hurried for the tent. Both of them knew what made that sound, and all too well.

Except for the hissing sound it made as it walked, the _Velociraptor_ moved through the grass as silently as a ghost. Muldoon recognized it as his stalker, the alpha raptor. The "Big One," as they called it back at InGen.

"_Velociraptor_," the two men said simultaneously as they looked out of the tent. And they gave each other a funny look.

"How can you know what that thing is?" Muldoon whispered fiercely. "They should all be lumbering lizards in your point of view!"

"How do _you_ know?" Riddell interrogated. "I'm the only man in Africa to have seen these in the flesh. And why is it featherless?"

"Of course it's featherless, why should it have feathers in the first place?"

While the two men were bickering as quietly as they could, the _Velociraptor_ had raised its head and spotted the tent.

"I know more about these things than you ever will, and I swear they were like half-plucked birds."

"_You've_ never had one try to kill you. Twice!"

"I have, thank you very much! And…oh, bollocks."

Muldoon looked up, and saw the _Velociraptor_ staring at them right in the face. "Crap," he whispered.

Riddell stood up and aimed his own gun. "Stand back, Muldoon. Watch how a professional works."

"You suicidal fool!" Muldoon shouted, and scurried to his feet with shotgun in hand.

With a titanic scream, the _Velociraptor_ charged.

Muldoon and Riddell fired at the raptor, churning out round after round. As soon as the bullets hit flesh the raptor tumbled over, blood spilling from holes that tore straight through its body. Two blows to the head later, it made one last tumble and slumped to the ground in front of the men, dead.

They said nothing for a while until Muldoon spoke up. "Do you know something, Riddell?"

"What?" Riddell asked.

"I actually quite liked that."

"Me too."

A sharp sound echoed across the savanna, like nails against the chalkboard. And then a loud, distorted voice started talking. "Ah, yes, hello!" it said. "Right, sorry about that."

Muldoon looked up. "Um…"

"I apologize for the inconveniences, I was just playing a couple games with Schrodinger and things got out of hand. Anyway, just a localized time rift, nothing to worry about. You can head back to your own time whenever you like, all you have to do is go back to that place nearby with the bright light in the air. Never fancied diamonds in the sky for a portal, but that's just the way things worked out. Lovely talking to you though, bye!"

And then it was gone.

"By the way, ever heard of Schrodinger's cat? Well, it's neither alive nor dead, I'm afraid. Bit of a zombie cat. Nasty. Carry on, chaps!"

And then it was gone, again.

Muldoon looked around, trying not to question things. Before Jurassic Park, this was where he had always been, and how he lived. "I think I'd rather stay here, if that's quite alright."

"Go ahead," Riddell said. "You're going to have to explain a lot to me." He looked at the dead raptor in front of them, staining the grass red. "And I think I'll have a bit of explaining to do as well. Nef is going to be furious."

"Who's Nef?"

"Oh, you'll find out."

Muldoon shrugged. It was only now that he realized his hat was sitting atop his head, despite having left it on the ground back at the island. Funny how things worked like that.

"Do you want the trophy, or should I?"

"We could split it," Riddell suggested.

"How do you split a raptor?"

"Lengthwise, I guess."

The two men stood there, contemplating the raptor and the savanna. Muldoon cleared his throat.

"Well, you get the job of gutting it, then."


End file.
